[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----DEL. S.C., FLA., LA., OHIO

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 22



DELAWLARE:

Delaware groups say it's time to revoke the death penalty


The Complexities of Color Coalition. the Delaware chapter of the NAACP, the 
Delaware Repeal Project and the Unitarian Universalists of Southern 
Delaware"announced the 1st of 4 town hall meetings in the effort to repeal the 
death penalty Monday.

The 1st meeting will take place in Lewes, Del. on Sept. 24 at 7 p.m. at the new 
Unitarian Universalists of Southern Delaware building.

The group says they encourage people of all races and view points to attend the 
meetings.

Dr. Donald Morton, executive director of the Complexities of Color Coalition 
says he welcomes a debate on the topic and is hopeful that death penalty reform 
will pass during the next legislative session.

"We believe that (the meetings) are critically important to making sure that is 
what is done on behalf of the citizens of the state Delaware what is happening 
in legislative hall is done for the right reasons and by those individuals that 
we've elected," Morton says.

(source: WMDT news)






SOUTH CAROLINA:

Columbia attorney Deborah Barbier assigned to Roof-related case


A federal judge on Monday appointed Columbia defense attorney Deborah Barbier 
to represent a friend of Dylann Roof's, the Columbia area man charged with 
murder in connection with the June shooting deaths of 9 African-American 
churchgoers at a Charleston church.

Roof stayed with Joey Meek, 21, at Meek's mother's trailer in a Red Bank mobile 
home park in the weeks before the June 17 slayings.

A federal indictment made public Friday alleges Meek knew about Roof's plans to 
shoot African-American parishioners at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston before 
the June 17 killings. And the indictment said he "did not, as soon as possible, 
make known the same to some judge or other person in civil authority under the 
United States."

The indictment also alleges that on June 18, a day after the shootings, Meek 
told an FBI agent "he did not know specifics of Dylann Roof's plan" to kill 
people at the church. The document alleged "Meek's statements and 
representations denying such specifics were false, fictitious and fraudulent 
when made."

The FBI agent had gone to interview Meek about Roof the day after the 
Charleston killings, which have emerged as one of the nation's most horrific 
mass killings in recent years.

Barbier, 46, whose father was an FBI agent, is a former federal prosecutor with 
wide experience in both state and federal criminal cases.

She declined comment Monday afternoon.

In a 2012 interview about her work, Barbier said federal court "is not a place 
for amateurs" and to be a good trial lawyer "you have to have a very thick 
skin."

Under the order by U.S. Magistrate Judge Shiva Hodges, Barbier will defend Meek 
at taxpayer expense. To receive a court-appointed lawyer, Meek had to qualify 
as being too poor to pay for a lawyer. Under the Constitution, poor defendants 
in criminal cases are entitled to have a competent lawyer.

Meek faces a maximum of 8 years in prison on both the charges.

Barbier has represented a variety of high-profile defendants in state and 
federal courts since leaving the U.S. Attorney's office in Columbia in 2012.

Currently, she is representing a client in the high-profile Berkeley County 
school case, which is being investigated by the state grand jury. Earlier this 
year in federal court, she represented former Williamsburg County Sheriff 
Michael Johnson, who was convicted in a jury trial of a white collar fraud 
scheme.

As a prosecutor, one of Barbier's more publicized cases involved an undercover 
agent who penetrated a secret Lexington County illegal major cockfighting 
operation. After that 2010 trial, the jury convicted 6 defendants, most of whom 
wound up with prison sentences. She also prosecuted former Lee County Sheriff 
E.J. Mevin, who was convicted in 2010 on federal racketeering charges, and 
assorted drug dealers and white collar criminals.

In the federal court system, judges and prosecutors usually prefer to have an 
experienced defense lawyer on the other side because it lessens the chance of 
an appeal overturning a case because a defendant didn't receive adequate 
representation. Also, as a former federal prosecutor, Barbier will presumably 
know the strengths and weaknesses of the case against Meek.

Although Deborah Butcher, a Camden attorney who represented Meek on Friday for 
his 1st court appearance, has extensive state criminal experience, a review of 
U.S. court records turned up no federal criminal cases that she had been 
involved in. Butcher is no longer involved in Meek's defense, according to 
federal court records.

Roof has been charged with murder in both state and federal courts. Ninth 
Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson is seeking the death penalty, and a tentative 
date for trial on those charges is early July. Federal prosecutors have not yet 
decided to seek the death penalty; no date has been set for his trial.

(source: thestate.com)






FLORIDA:

Defense attorneys request suppression of Toledo's statements----Bodies of 
mother, 2 children missing


Luis Toledo, accused of killing his wife and her 2 children 3 years ago, said 
to deputies after his arrest: "I'm never going to tell where the bodies are."

That's according to testimony from Volusia County Sheriff's Office Investigator 
Bryan Ford during a hearing Monday in the case against Toledo.

Toledo is charged with 2nd-degree murder in the slaying of his wife, Yessenia 
Suarez, 28, and 2 counts of 1st-degree murder in the killing of her children, 
Thalia, 9, and Michael, 8. The mother and children were reported missing from 
their home at 317 Covent Gardens Place in Deltona by the children's grandmother 
on Oct. 23, 2013. Their bodies have not been found. If convicted of 1st-degree 
murder, Toledo, 33, could face the death penalty.

Toledo also suggested that investigators help him commit suicide. Toledo made 
the request on Oct. 26, 2013 to Volusia Sheriff's Office Sgt. Kurt Schoeps, 
Ford testified.

"Mr. Toledo asked that Sgt. Schoeps arrange to take him back to the Covent 
Gardens house," Ford said. "And he said we could, I say we the Sheriff's 
Office, ... loosen his cuffs. He could slip his cuffs and pretend like he was 
trying to escape and we could shoot him."

Later that day, Toledo did try to commit suicide by using his handcuffs to 
smash the glass inside a restroom at the Sheriff's Office. Toledo then used a 
glass shard to cut himself. Deputies broke into the restroom and used a Taser 
on Toledo to subdue him.

Toledo, who was at one time a high-ranking member of the Latin Kings gang in 
Florida, wore an orange jail jumpsuit and handcuffs as he sat between 2 of his 
3 defense attorneys and looked straight ahead during the testimony. Some women 
who identified themselves as Toledo's cousins sat in the audience and watched 
the proceedings. On the opposite side of the courtroom some of Suarez's family 
watched.

Toledo, who at one point was studying to be a barber, had his hair and beard 
neatly trimmed.

The hearing before Circuit Judge Raul Zambrano at the Volusia County Courthouse 
was based on a request to suppress Toledo's statements by defense attorneys' 
Jeff Deen, Michael Nielsen and Michael Nappi.

Deen questioned Ford about whether investigators had told Toledo's defense 
attorney, which at the time was the Public Defender's Office, that they were 
talking to Toledo. Ford said no and that Toledo had asked to talk to them and 
had been given his Miranda rights.

Deen also renewed a motion that Judge Zambrano stay the proceedings until the 
U.S. Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of Florida's death penalty. 
Florida is 1 of only 2 states with the death penalty that does not require a 
unanimous recommendation from a jury for a judge to impose a death sentence. 
The other state, Alabama, requires a supermajority but Florida only requires a 
majority vote from jurors, 7 to 5.

Deen said that some circuits have stopped death penalty cases until the Supreme 
Court makes its decision. Judge Zambrano also asked if other circuits were 
going ahead with their death penalty cases. Deen said some others were going 
forward.

Prosecutor Ed Davis argued against delaying the case, saying there was no 
reason to stop and that other courts were not stopping their death penalty 
cases.

Zambrano said the hearing will continue on Tuesday and he will make a decision 
this week.

Zambrano approved a defense request for Toledo to wear a white T-shirt beneath 
his orange jail jumpsuit on Tuesday after one of his defense attorneys asked, 
saying that the courthouse could get cold.

(source: Pensacola News Journal)






LOUISIANA:

New study says Louisiana's system of execution is one in 'disrepair'


Black Lives Matter has become a rallying cry for thousands of activists across 
the country for more than a year, heightening a debate over policing in the 
wake of high-profile officer-involved shootings. But a new study of capital 
punishment in Louisiana also calls into question the value of Black lives 
versus the lives of the state's white majority when it comes to how the state 
metes out the death penalty.

A new white paper from the University of North Carolina details stark 
differences in the race of who the state chooses to execute and for what crimes 
capital punishment is seen as justified sentencing. Homicides of white 
residents are 10 times more likely to result in an execution than criminal 
deaths of Blacks. Homicides of white women are 48 times more likely to yield 
capital punishment than those of Black men.

Prof. Frank Baumgartner, who authored the study, said "...these racial ... 
disparities are not measured by a few percentage points of difference. Rather, 
they differ by orders of magnitude, demonstrating that Louisiana's death 
penalty is plagued by vast inequities which will undermine public confidence in 
the state's ability to carry out the death penalty in a fair and impartial 
manner" in a news release.

Louisiana's system of capital punishment has long been under scrutiny as death 
row inmates continue to battle the state on temperature indexes inside the 
Louisiana State Penitentiary, which are reported to reach well over 100 degrees 
in the summer months. The years-long legal wrangling between the state and 3 
inmates facing capital punishment has not aided the public perception of death 
sentencing.

The report also highlights the overwhelming favorability that white homicide 
victims, and their families, enjoy in the pursuit of justice. 79 % of the 
individuals executed in Louisiana in the modern era were convicted of killing 
white victims even though white victims are only 26 % of all murder victims in 
the state. Austin Sarat, a professor at Amherst College, called the state's 
system of execution one in "disrepair."

Sarat, a professor of jurisprudence and political science, said Louisiana's 
problem, while more stark than other states, is not unique and represents a 
"pervasive problem" connected to administering the death penalty, citing recent 
attention to a spate of botched executions and the controversial search for 
drug cocktails to kill inmates as pharmacies and medial professionals back away 
from aiding state executions. Louisiana has come under fire as recently as 2014 
for illegally obtaining drug cocktails for executions.

Sarat co-authored the book From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State which paints a 
picture connecting the states that were home to the lynching era of the early 
1900s, mostly of Black southern men, to who today are home to high rates of 
capital punishment, mostly involving Black and Hispanic men. Sarat said the 
reasons for the racial gap in capital sentencing "speak for themselves," 
calling the death penalty as a tool and its political application a nationwide 
"mechanism for maintaining racial privilege." The UNC study also states that 74 
% of death sentences in Louisiana in the past 40 years have been for killing a 
white victim. Additionally, "there are no documented cases in the entire 
history of Louisiana," according to the report, "where a White person has been 
executed for killing a Black male."

The full study will appear this fall in the New Orleans Journal of Public 
Interest Law published by Loyola University.

(source: Louisiana Weekly)

************

Killers of black men less likely to get the death penalty


It's extremely rare for the killer of a black male to receive the death 
penalty, according to a new study published by Loyola University.

"Across the state 72 % of the homicide victims are black, only 28 % are white 
or other, so you would expect that it would be somewhere in line with that with 
the use of the death sentence, but its not," said Tim Lyman, the study's 
co-author.

Lyman co-wrote the study with Frank Baumgartner, a political science professor. 
For the past five years, they have been collecting data on every execution and 
death sentence since 1976. Out of 1,400 executions across the country, only 17 
involved someone who killed a black victim. In the state of Louisiana, 
Baumgartner says the racial disparity is even more extreme.

"There has never been a white person in the history of Louisiana executed for 
killing a black man," said Baumgartner.

That's a big contrast to crimes where a white woman is killed. The study found 
that those who murder white females are 48 times more likely to be executed. 
They believe these racial and gender discrepancies are deeply rooted in 
historical patterns.

Baumgartner explained, "In particular it was based on a fear of some kind of 
sexual crime targeted toward white females."

Marjorie Esman with the ACLU was shocked by the numbers and says it's time to 
reevaluate how the country views capital punishment.

"The problems in the system are so ingrained that we really need to give it a 
halt because we can't as a society do it fairly and I think that's what these 
numbers show is that we can't do it fairly," said Esman.

If you would like to view the entire study visit: 
http://www.unc.edu/~fbaum/articles/Louisiana-RaceOfVictim-LJPIL-Fall2015.pdf

(source: WWL TV news)






OHIO:

Defending Ohio's indigents pays little


The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1963 that a fair trial requires adequate legal 
representation, even if the defendant can't afford it.

But 52 years after that decision, critics say the criminal-defense system for 
indigent people is both dramatically underfunded and ripe for abuse.

In Ohio, providing legal defense for those who can't afford it has largely been 
left to each county. Consequently, there is little consistency. Indigent 
defense is provided through various state and/or county public-defenders 
offices or private lawyers appointed by a judge.

39 of Ohio's 88 counties exclusively appoint private counsel to indigent 
defendants. But even in the 49 counties that have their own public defender's 
office, such as Franklin County, or rely on the state public defender's office, 
private, court-appointed lawyers are needed.

Each county sets its own hourly rates and caps for reimbursing court-appointed 
lawyers. In many cases, those rates haven't changed for decades.

The result, said Ohio Public Defender Timothy Young, is that more and more of 
the most-qualified and most-experienced lawyers are cutting back on 
court-appointed work, leaving it to less-experienced attorneys who are willing 
to take less money to gain the experience.

What the government has done is kept pay low to subsidize the prosecution of 
their clients that they're sworn to defend, at the cost of their constitutional 
obligation," said Young, a staunch advocate of reforming the state's 
indigent-defense system. "Don't get me wrong: there are some really good 
lawyers still doing this work. But we're losing good lawyers by the droves."

In Licking County, for example, the rate for reimbursing court-appointed 
lawyers is $35 an hour for out-of-court work and $45 for in-court time, up to a 
maximum reimbursement of $1,000 for a felony case - that's less than many of 
the area's top lawyers charge just as a retainer fee. Licking's rate is one of 
the lowest in the state.

Kristin Burkett, partner in the Burkett-Sanderson law firm that provides most 
of the county's indigent defense work, explained: "When you figure the cost of 
providing an office and staff, health and retirement benefits, utilities and 
supplies, we're working for a lot less than that."

"It's atrocious," said Licking County Common Pleas Judge David Branstool, who 
estimated that 90 percent of the cases in his court qualify for court-appointed 
defense. "It's been 20 years since the Licking County commissioners have 
addressed this. The commissioners, judges, prosecutors have all had raises in 
that time. Yet the people who we expect to provide the same quality of work 
haven't. It's not fair. It's a problem, and it's an embarrassment."

Licking County Commissioner Tim Bubb disagreed: "If there's a problem, they 
haven't told us that."

Bubb blamed the state for the funding problems.

When the state instituted its system of providing criminal defense for those 
who couldn't afford it, the plan was that the state and the counties would 
split the costs equally, he said.

But when the recession hit, the state began to back off on its share of local 
indigent-defense funding, Bubb said. By 2008, the state's portion was down to 
25 %, with the counties forced to make up the difference. Since then, the 
state's portion has slowly started to grow again, with the latest increase, 
from 40 % to 48 % (50 % for death-penalty cases), occurring in July.

"It's not like that's found money," Bubb said. "We were punished. The state 
didn't live up to its end of the bargain, and for a decade the counties have 
paid dearly for the state's portion."

Young thinks that indigent defense should be the sole responsibility of the 
state and proposed legislation that would make it a state-funded system by 
adding 10 % to the state's share over a 6-year period.

"It was dead on arrival," Young said. "It got 1 hearing in the legislature. I 
was told that it was too controversial."

Young tried again with another proposal for the state's last budget cycle that 
would keep the 50-50 state/county split but add $20 million to the system to 
allow every county to pay the same rate. That one didn't go anywhere, either.

The Ohio Administrative Code states that the assignment of an attorney "should 
be independent from individual influence or choice by any member of the 
judiciary."

Many judges get around that by having a magistrate or another member of the 
court make the selections. Some judges divide their lists of lawyers seeking 
court-appointed work into segments, separating those qualified for more-serious 
felonies from those who are less experienced and relegated to the lower-level 
crimes. Those then are appointed on a straight rotation, picking the next name 
on the list.

But there's little oversight, and some say the system invites conflicts, 
particularly when attorneys donate to judicial campaigns.

Franklin County Common Pleas Judge David Young, whose term on the bench began 
July 1, dismissed the notion that favoritism plays a role in picking attorneys 
for indigent defendants.

"(The campaign contributions) had zero impact whatsoever," he said.

Tim Young, the Ohio public defender and no relation to Judge Young, said that 
the very perception of a conflict is indication of a fatal flaw in the system.

"I am not suggesting that there's any judge who's corrupt," he said. "Judges 
may never even see who contributes, or never intend for those contributions to 
buy any influence. But the perception of this is so driven by what the lawyers 
think that judges want, in the end it doesn't matter."

Judges also are in the position to approve who meets the state's indigent 
standard, without any real time or resources to do much verification, and also 
are the ones who approve the bills submitted by court-appointed lawyers.

"I don't think that we should be the gatekeeper deciding who gets cases and who 
doesn't," Branstool said. "Nor do I think we should be put in the position of 
having to audit the bills of the defense. But the way the system is now, I'm 
not going to leave it up to anybody else."

(source: The Columbus Dispaptch)